Custom ERP development vs customizing an existing platform
Customizing standard platforms like NetSuite or SAP for specialized workflows requires massive, expensive consulting fees and painful modifications, yet building from scratch is intimidating for a small team. This leaves companies stuck between massive customization bills and the heavy lift of custom software development.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Evaluating and buying standard horizontal or vertical ERP software and heavily customizing it
- 2Adapting internal business operations to fit the standard workflows of off-the-shelf systems
- 3Using best-of-breed systems for financials and building custom, isolated MRP or tooling that integrates with them
- 4building custom portals in-house
- 5hiring consultants to build custom solutions
- 6navigating the native enterprise software interface directly
- 7Making the CRM free for everybody
- 8Targeting SMBs instead of large companies
- 9Using existing big players like HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho, or Monday
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“We’re intimidated by having to customize an existing ERP platform so we’re considering building an entirely custom ERP platform from scratch”source ↗
“my attempt last year ate closer to 300 before I even had something that didn't crash when you clicked the wrong button”source ↗
“spent months obsessing over real-time dashboards only to realize most users just want a place to dump names and phone numbers without fighting the interface”source ↗
“Ideally we don't build it ourselves because my team is tiny but also don't want to pay our netsuite consultant 200k for this.”source ↗
“I work for a specialty food distributor with a lot of specific, non-standard operational workflows. We’ve evaluated standard platforms like NetSuite, Dynamics, and SAP, but fitting our day-to-day processes into them looks like it'll require massive, expensive customization regardless. Because of that, we're currently in talks with a dev shop about custom erp software development built specifically around our process.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 3Is enterprise software support actually worth the cost for small teams?
- 17Should customer support live inside our CRM?